Healthcare Website For Transgender Community To Launch In Miami

Hear Aryah Lester talk about her personal experience as transgender woman and patient.

A new website will make it easier for Miami's transgendercommunity to access healthcare providers who are experienced in working with trans individuals.

MyTransHealth is a website developed for transgender people by transgender people. The site will connect transgender people with qualified medical professionals and also allow users to rate and review them.

Aryah Lester, a Miami trans woman and activist, said this is a much needed service. She gave her personal testimonial on a video promoting the website which will launch first in Miami and New York before branching out to other states.

She said some doctors insist on labeling her as a "gay man." Many doctors, she said in an interview Monday, are not educated about gender identity.

According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 50 percent of trans patients reported having to educate their doctors on transgender care and 19 percent of respondents reported being denied medical care because of their transgender or gender-nonconforming status.

"A lot of trans people don’t have access to credible, informed and sensitive doctors," Lester said.

She said that lack of training and education robs her and many others of their dignity when they visit medical providers.

For example, when health care professionals insist on calling transgender people by their birth name, instead of their preferred name, which corresponds with their gender identity.

"Being in the waiting room and having a nurse come out and just blatantly state your given birth name, you don’t want to get up, but you know you have to. And people are looking at you all weird," Lester said. They just out you as being trans."

And when she does go in to see a doctor, she says some have never treated a transgender person and struggle with prescribing hormones or requesting basic tests, she said.

Lester said MyTransHealth will hopefully provide her and other transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals with options for quality and caring healthcare.

“She didn’t want to see me transitioning,” said Poison Ivy, who asked that her real name not be used. “It’s just so hard for her to notice that her grandson, someone that has loved her for a long time is becoming a woman.”

So Poison Ivy moved in with friends. Some of them don’t know what the 18-year-old does for a living.

The National LGBTQ Task Force held a conference focusing on advocacy for transgender and non-gender-conforming individuals Friday in Miami. Attendees at the Unity on the Bay building in midtown were instructed on how to canvass neighborhoods and given leadership training.